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Bob Geldof appeals for support for Zimbabwe

January 1st, 2003

Sir Bob Geldof spoke yesterday at St Paul's Cathedral at the launch of two new projects to support civil society in Zimbabwe. The projects are the Zimbabwe Defence and Aid Fund, and its sister organisation, the Zimbabwe Aid Foundation. The Patrons of the funds are Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus, and Pius Ncube, Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo. The Funds have wide-ranging objectives, but in particular have a remit to support those who have become the victims of illegal detention, malicious prosecution and worse by the Zimbabwe state machinery. In his lecture, Sir Bob Geldof called for a massive deployment of resources to help Africa. he said: "Africa has slipped out of the world safety net. They drift away from us propelled by the enormity of their poverty and our exhausted indifference. "They have entered a category of their own. Composed of the most vulnerable and marginalised, most put upon and ignored. They have become a new category of misery, a continental underclass - a fourth world." Speaking to the press after his lecture, Geldof said: "The fact that Mugabe is still in power brings shame on the whole of Africa. The fight against Mugabe is nothing to do with the Western world, we now live in an independent world which should have no truck with this thug. Mugabe has not just tipped into this madness. He is clever and intelligent and has always presented his case with spurious arguments. Essentially he is a divisionist thug, he has been killing the Matabele people for 20 years, he is a murderous ...., and one of the grotesque tyrants on the planet. The sooner he goes the better."

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